LINGUINE WITH “COLATURA DI ALICI” (ANCHOVY SAUCE)

When I visited my family in Italy, back in August 2019, my mom and her boyfriend Renato spoiled me with so many delicious dishes – everything absolutely home-made and nothing that necessarily belongs to the repertoire of the most famous and traditional Italian dishes that everyone aboard knows and thinks that Italians eat on a daily basis (lasagna, tiramisu, cioppino, pizza, etc…).

Their cuisine is unconventional and based on a few simple principles:

• Use only fresh ingredients;
• Make everything (or almost) from scratch;
• Follow the “naked taste” rule: if you use fresh ingredients, everything – from veggies to fish and meat – has to taste “naked”, nothing needs to be loaded with cheese, oils or other condiments that “cover up” the natural taste of what you’re eating;
• After a meal you need to feel full, not stuffed.

This is why I love eating at home – I rarely go out for dinner or lunch when I’m back to Italy (I do it when I want to eat a good pizza): everything we have and cook at home is just so good, light and tasty that doesn’t make me desire restaurant food at all (which is actually something I try to avoid and just stick to 

On my first Sunday there, Renato cooked one of his “signature dishes”: pasta with colatura di alici …  something extremely simple but that I never get to eat when I’m not home (and “home” is Italy).

“Colatura di alici” literally means “anchovy drippings” and that’s pretty much a sauce made with just two ingredients, anchovies and salt, obtained by layering anchovy fillets and salt in wooden barrels and then setting them aside in a temperature-controlled environment to ferment for a very long time. During this time, the anchovies exude liquid that will age and eventually become what we call “colatura” (sauce, just like the Asian fish sauce, but not of the same flavor). The sauce is then purified and bottled: it’s usually very salty and obviously carries a strong anchovy flavor.

Colatura has its home in Cetara, the city on the Amalfi coast where the “dripping” is traditionally produced. 

It’s typically used as a pasta sauce with some additional ingredients (Spaghetti is the kind of pasta you want to use for this dish, but any other kind will of course work).The recipe is very simple and full of taste but I’d like to warn those of you who, like me, do not like to eat particularly salty: for you guys, I would recommend NOT adding any salt to the water where you are going to boil the pasta and to the rest of the ingredients that you will add to make the sauce.

Print Recipe

LINGUINE WITH “COLATURA DI ALICI” (ANCHOVY SAUCE)

Prep Time

30 minutes

Servings

people

Ingredients

• 5 walnuts
• 2 Tbsp capers
• 6 green olives pitted
• 8 black olives pitted
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 Tbsp Extra virgin olive oil
• Half medium lemon juice and zest
• Pepper to taste
• Colatura di alici to taste
• 400 g linguine pasta

Prep Time 30 minutes Servings people Ingredients 5 walnuts 2 Tbsp capers 6 green olives pitted 8 black olives pitted 1 clove garlic 1 Tbsp Extra virgin olive oil Half medium lemon juice and zest Pepper to taste Colatura di alici to taste 400 g linguine pasta

Instructions

1. Gather together all the ingredients for the sauce EXCEPT the colatura di alici: place all ingredients from the walnuts to the pepper into a powerful small blender (immersion blender will work too) and start blending till you reach a granular but creamy-style paste, salty and very strong in flavor. The paste should NOT be completely smooth and without any chunk, but at the same time should NOT be too chunky either.
2. If you are unable to reach the desired consistency with the blender & ingredients listed or you want to make it smoother and need/want to add more liquid to reach a better paste-like consistency, I strongly recommend to refrain from adding more olive oil (this will turn it into a greasy sauce) and wait till you’re cooking the pasta to add a few tablespoons of its cooking water to your sauce.
3. Once the paste is fully or for the most part blended, set it on a side and start cooking the pasta.

   
4. Bring a large pan of water to a boil then add the pasta of your choice: for this kind of sauce, short pasta is NOT recommended (but not forbidden either), therefore linguine or spaghetti would be the best choice.
5. Follow cooking times indicated on the pasta box but make sure you keep it “al dente” … at least, this is how we eat it in Italy!
6. When the pasta is ready, drain it and pour it into a bowl, then add the paste and start mixing very well.
7. At this point, you’ll be adding the colatura di alici, straight from the bottle: mix thoroughly till all the paste has evenly spread among the pasta.

   
8. Best paired with a dry, fruity white wine or sparkling white wine (champagne).
9. Buon appetito!!

   

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